December 9, 2016 at 12:34 am
Eric M Russell (12/8/2016)
Regardless of whether we're interviewing for a DBA or a developer who will code SQL, one question I ask is:"For the next 15 minutes, explain everything you know about locking, blocking, and isolation level."
Yes, that's a broad topic, but I can tell a LOT about someone's past experience and areas of expertise based on that one question.
Deadlocks. Explain.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
December 9, 2016 at 7:18 am
Gary Varga (12/8/2016)
I have an advantage as an interviewer as I have full self-awareness that I am not hip.
LOL! 🙂
My kids would not disagree with that assessment of myself. I'm not even allowed to talk in the car when playing taxi for my oldest daughter and her friends. 🙂
December 9, 2016 at 7:45 am
Gary Varga (12/9/2016)
Eric M Russell (12/8/2016)
Regardless of whether we're interviewing for a DBA or a developer who will code SQL, one question I ask is:"For the next 15 minutes, explain everything you know about locking, blocking, and isolation level."
Yes, that's a broad topic, but I can tell a LOT about someone's past experience and areas of expertise based on that one question.
Deadlocks. Explain.
Many organizations use pop-quiz style questions with answers (ie: "What is a clustered index?" :doze:), the type of questions you can grab from the internet half an hour before the interview, because it makes scoring and ranking candidates more straightforward. They want to boil it down to something like: Jack scored 18 and John scored 14, so we want to hire Jack.
However, I've found that "Explain this..." or "Tell me about..." type discussions are more revealing. There have been times when a candidate has breezed through a dozen stock SQL Server interview questions (which they probably Googled the night before), but then they totally blank out when asked a question like: "Tell me about an experience you've had involving deadlocking. How did you diagnose and resolve the issue?".
The thing is, once hired for the job, nobody comes to the DBA and asked "Say, Bob, what's a clustered index?". What the business expects from the DBA is someone who can proactively monitor, fix, and prevent problems.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
December 9, 2016 at 9:22 am
Eric M Russell (12/9/2016)
Gary Varga (12/9/2016)
Eric M Russell (12/8/2016)
Regardless of whether we're interviewing for a DBA or a developer who will code SQL, one question I ask is:"For the next 15 minutes, explain everything you know about locking, blocking, and isolation level."
Yes, that's a broad topic, but I can tell a LOT about someone's past experience and areas of expertise based on that one question.
Deadlocks. Explain.
Many organizations use pop-quiz style questions with answers (ie: "What is a clustered index?" :doze:), the type of questions you can grab from the internet half an hour before the interview, because it makes scoring and ranking candidates more straightforward. They want to boil it down to something like: Jack scored 18 and John scored 14, so we want to hire Jack.
However, I've found that "Explain this..." or "Tell me about..." type discussions are more revealing. There have been times when a candidate has breezed through a dozen stock SQL Server interview questions (which they probably Googled the night before), but then they totally blank out when asked a question like: "Tell me about an experience you've had involving deadlocking. How did you diagnose and resolve the issue?".
The thing is, once hired for the job, nobody comes to the DBA and asked "Say, Bob, what's a clustered index?". What the business expects from the DBA is someone who can proactively monitor, fix, and prevent problems.
The company I used to work for started all the tech candidates out with a basic grade school level math quiz such as train A leaves its station going X mph and train B leaves its station going Y MPH heading toward each other if they're Z miles apart how long until they collide. It was amazing how many people were weeded out before even talking to the HR interviewer 🙁 (these were people applying for developer type positions)
The pay was low but still these were people with some form of post high school education....
December 9, 2016 at 11:21 pm
(Don't get me wrong, I know how to code, but I'm not that great.)
The test I give to a interviewee would be writing a code which would add, insert, update and delete data from database to SQL. As this basic procedures are the fundamentals of developing and maintaining a software. This could be done specially from fresh grads, and what I found out, most of them fail to apply these things, even in using ADODC. When it comes to experienced ones, I would ask what is there asking salary, then create the same system, but somehow, I check weather they used stored procedures, view, etc... to do such things, and how fast they created the system. I also check their code in the development software, and check if they just searched the code in the internet, with this approach, I could tell if the programmer is above average, or just a plain copier of codes.
December 15, 2016 at 1:55 pm
joshua 15769 (12/9/2016)
(Don't get me wrong, I know how to code, but I'm not that great.)The test I give to a interviewee would be writing a code which would add, insert, update and delete data from database to SQL. As this basic procedures are the fundamentals of developing and maintaining a software. This could be done specially from fresh grads, and what I found out, most of them fail to apply these things, even in using ADODC. When it comes to experienced ones, I would ask what is there asking salary, then create the same system, but somehow, I check weather they used stored procedures, view, etc... to do such things, and how fast they created the system. I also check their code in the development software, and check if they just searched the code in the internet, with this approach, I could tell if the programmer is above average, or just a plain copier of codes.
If you are looking at someone some of whose code is on the web, you're going to assume that he/she is just a plain copier of code? Stikes me as probably a mistake. Some of the people whose code is to be found on the web are very competent indeed.
Quite apart from that little issue, when someone is working for you and can find and properly evalueuate some code for you with a couple of days' work while designing and writing from scratch would be a couple of week's work, they are going to be much more productive than someone who insists on always reinventing the wheel - are you happy that you may be throwing away the company's money to indulge a prejudice against people who try to be efficient?
Tom
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